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Friday, March 3, 2017

After my third kid was born, my body started giving me all these warnings. It felt like my body was in panic mode and I didn't know why. Eventually I read this article on postnatal depletion, and my body said: "YES! That is the problem!" So I super upped my vitamin intake and started really working on taking care of myself nutritionally.

Things improved... but not nearly as fast or as much as I had been hoping.

This is Laura. She is the actual best!

Obviously I am a big believer in energy work, which can make a huge difference, but the fact is that energy work can NOT replace nutrition. I could tell that my problem was a nutritional problem, but I didn't know how to fix it!

Last year, she sustained a traumatic brain injury that was unresponsive to her doctors' attempts at healing. She turned to nutrition for a solution and it changed everything. She became a nutritional therapy practitioner and I was one of the lucky ones who early on got to benefit from her expertise.

She has a 300-question questionnaire about my body and its workings, and she interviewed me to learn more about my body, and then analyzed it all to discover that my immune system was having problems (I already knew that), my sugar handling was problematic (eek: sugar addiction), and that my adrenals were seriously fatigued. What?! Now that I had not realized!

And even though I'd known about the other issues, I hadn't known how to solve the problems on the nutritional level my body needed.

She was able to recommend a targeted supplement routine for me that would support the exact internal organs of mine that were struggling. And seriously, guys: the first time I took my adrenal supplement... it was like I was alive again after an extended period of zombiehood. I could feel my body thanking me for FINALLY supporting it with the proper nutrition it had needed all along.

It has been an incredible journey. Since finally supporting my immune system nutritionally, I have gone from being sick every month--really every few weeks--to basically never being sick. Sometimes I get a sore throat for a morning and then by the end of the day it's gone. My sleep is better. My energy levels are better. I've kicked my sugar addiction. As of yesterday I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight (the one from autumn of 2014!) and basically I'm just thrilled with my results. I know it has come from that one-on-one consultation of finding out the exact nutrients my body has needed!

Here is Laura's website--be sure to poke around and notice her glowing reviews and testimonials (some of them are from me!).THE CLASS I am so excited to team up with Laura for this upcoming class on Befriending Your Body. This will be four weeks in March, a combination of lecture and live Q+A, plus energy work aimed at supporting the body in its goals of physical and emotional healing and weight loss.

Laura will be leading off the four classes with a lecture on the body--and guys, her work is literally transformational. She's basing this course off another one I took from her earlier in the year, and that course way blew my mind. We'll be learning practical techniques for supporting our bodies nutritionally, and as a person who has been studying nutrition for half a decade now... I was blown away by how much new information I learned from Laura's last class.

After Laura's lesson and a live Q+A where you can ask about how to best support your personal body, I will be taking over with live group energy work.

This is me! Just since I
posted a picture of Laura
I thought I should post one
of me too. ;) This was from
our winter family pictures!
Thanks, Stephanie!

For that, I tune into the energy of the group as a whole, and then work on the things that come up--and what clears for one person clears for everyone who has that same issue. We'll clear weight triggers that keep your body plateaued in weight loss, fears about losing weight, and other emotions or energetic distortions that might be keeping you from meeting your body goals. We'll work on any sort of eating disorders that come up, both the diagnosable kind and otherwise. We'll work on body image issues, and of courseorgan support, if anyone's organ energies are holding toxic emotional energy that can be cleared. I will also be clearing any blocks that come up against nourishing the body and spirit generally.

And on top of that--guys--Laura just emailed me that she has already come up with a number of MEAL PLANS AND RECIPES that she will be sending to everyone after each lecture! Whoa!!! Even I was not expecting that. This is seriously a high-value course.

...AND she just emailed me again that she is also planning to hold weeklyoffice hours online where you can talk to her directly about your personal body issues outside of class in a more one-on-one setting. Guys, I'm pretty sure she charges over a hundred dollars an hour for personal consultations normally, so this is an AMAZING DEAL. I am blown away.

THE RESISTANCE

Do I hear the sound of triggers going off in the background? "This sounds like a lot of work!" "How will this be different from the other things I've tried?" "This will just be another failure for me, just like everything else!"

This is what makes it different from everything else:

This class combines sound, foundational nutritional knowledge in a way that is easy to apply (no diet, no "program," no rules to follow), with profoundly effective energy work.

If you have not used energy work to help your body before, well: you should, it can make a huge difference. It gets to the emotional root of issues that are holding you back. Are you holding onto weight because of fears of the future? Do you have digestive problems because your body is unwilling to "let things go" or because you have trouble recognizing the good in life? These are things a typical dietician or doctor is not going to find and even if they did, they couldn't help you with it. This is where energy work is extremely effective. Going to the emotional root of physical problems.

If you HAVE used energy work before, and didn't see the effect you wanted in your body, well, this is where the nutritional information comes in. For me, a master intuitive healer, even I couldn't heal my body through energy work alone. I needed the right structural foundation from the inside out. Once I pinpointed what my body needed nutritionally, I was all set. Maybe you have done a lot of energy work that should have cleared up issues that persist despite. In that case, discovering these crucial foundational concepts for health are vital for that work to fully apply and allow your body to release the old patterns and weight, if weight is a thing you are struggling with.

This class will clear blocks to weight loss, as well as other healing, but it is about so much more than weight loss. It's about feeling energized when you get up in the morning. It's about falling asleep more easily at night and getting higher quality rest. It's about looking in the mirror and realizing you are beautiful TODAY and your body is a miracle TODAY and your body and spirit can be a TEAM!

It's about getting your body and spirit on the same page, feeling grateful and joyful. It's about being a friend to your own body... and realizing that your body wants to be a friend to you, too.

THE VIDEO This is an interview I did with Laura about this class.

Here are some highlights:

0:45: the benefits of combining energy work and nutrition
2:03: the overall setup of the class
3:24: the philosophy behind the class
5:00: getting to a healthy weight because the body is HEALTHY, not because it is STARVING!
6:24: how this is about sustainability, NOT about being a "program" or a regimen or diet
10:53: how this course is uniquely personalized to YOUR specific body
11:43: learn my spirit vegetable (what's YOUR spirit vegetable?? I should make a personality test or something)
13:50: who is the ideal candidate for this class? Hint: people feeling betrayed by their bodies, people who have been trying to lose weight through diets, people frustrated with their mood or their energy levels day to day
18:03: healing mood through nutrition, releasing the power of the scale, getting to that point where you just LOVE YOUR BODY and you are so happy being healthy and looking great because you are healthy!

OTHER DETAILS

The class will be live online on Wednesday nights in March: 7:30-9:30 pm Mountain Time on March 8, 15, 22, and 29. Recordings will be available the next day.

This class is $220 if you pay in full, or 6 monthly payments of $40 (so you save $20 by paying in full). The button below is to pay in full--if you'd like to use a payment plan, or have any other questions, please contact me directly and we'll sort it all out! awinegarduzett @ gmail . com.

I am just so incredibly excited to share this class with you!!! We're going to TRANSFORM OUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR BODIES!!! I know you are going to love this class and how it blesses your body--and your emotions--and your whole life.

Registration will be open from NOW until the day class starts, Wednesday March 8.

PPS. With the class, you get 4 incredible lectures on how to heal your body from the inside out via nutrition, PLUS 4 incredible energy work sessions to clear your personal blocks against body healing, PLUS recipes PLUS meal plans PLUS one-on-one time with a nutritional therapy practitioner during weekly office hours to discuss your own body. WOWIE WOW!

Thursday, March 2, 2017

I've been working with bodies for a long time now, but it's only been recently I got into FASCIA. I am so excited to share this information with you--fascia is crazy amazing and taking good care of it can make a world of difference for your body!! But even more than that, it can make a difference for your EMOTIONS. This is a post about the fascia-emotion connection and why I have started recommending Ashley Black's FasciaBlaster to my emotion-work clients.

First: where are emotions stored? If you're not familiar with the groundbreaking work of Candace Pert, you should be. Candace Pert (now deceased) was a neuropharmacologist and incredible researcher. From her website, here is a basic overview of some of her vitally important research (some of the emphasis in the original, some of it mine):

It’s amazing to think of our glands, organs, tissues and cells as storage places for emotion and memory, yet this was given explanation through the scientific research of Dr. Candace Pert, a neuropharmacologist who worked at the NIH and Georgetown University Medical Center. Candace famously stated that “Your body is your subconscious mind. Our physical body can be changed by the emotions we experience.”[1] . Dr Pert explains:

“A feeling sparked in our mind-or body-will translate as a peptide being released somewhere. [Organs, tissues, skin, muscle and endocrine glands], they all have peptide receptors on them and can access and store emotional information. This means the emotional memory is stored in many places in the body, not just or even primarily, in the brain. You can access emotional memory anywhere in the peptide/receptor network, in any number of ways. I think unexpressed emotions are literally lodged in the body. The real true emotions that need to be expressed are in the body, trying to move up and be expressed and thereby integrated, made whole, and healed.

This is what all my work is based on: the idea that the human body stores our emotions, and that our emotions can cause physical problems, and that when we clear emotional problems we can clear our physical problems.

FASCIA is important because it is a tissue of the body--and can store emotions just like all the other tissues of the body. But in a way it's even more important than other tissues of the body, for reasons I'll discuss below.

What is fascia? The first time I heard of fascia was maybe a year ago, when I was recently postpartum with Kid #3. It was my first time ever getting real massages, and at one point my massage therapist told me she was doing a "fascial release" technique of some kind. She explained that fascia is kind of this white goo that permeates muscles and helps them out. If your muscle is held in a certain way long enough, your fascia will in a way mold to that shape so that the muscles don't need to work so hard.

But then, unless you consciously release the fascia, it just keeps holding that shape until it is forced not to anymore.

That was my ultra basic understanding of fascia about a year ago.

At the time, the emotional and energetic implications were very clear to me. I had already noticed during the course of these massages that certain parts of my body seemed to hold different memory fields--when she would touch my arm, I would suddenly remember a piano lesson I hadn't thought about for 20 years, for example. Massage turns out to be a powerful energy healing modality that most people don't even realize they're experiencing.

But fascia!

My FasciaBlaster. The claws can act
as a comb for the fascia, breaking up
adhesions and other gunk.

It seemed to me that obviously fascia would store even more memory than muscle would. Since fascia weaves through virtually all the tissues of the body, strengthening and supporting those tissues so they can better perform their vital functions... of course if the body had a choice to store emotions in an organ or in fascia, it would choose fascia. That way the organs can still function, and the fascia can hold the dysfunctional emotions involved instead.

This also makes sense from a physical perspective. Say you have a really tense situation at work, or at home. When you think about it, you start to clench. Your stomach might tighten up. You might clench your jaw or tense your shoulders.

After a while, your muscles get tired, and the fascia decides to mold to that shape to strengthen your muscles and let them relax a little. As soon as that happens, the fascia is not just holding the position of the muscles, but also the "muscle memory" of the traumatic event that is causing the tension.

So basically: however much trauma from your life your muscles and organs are storing, your fascia is likely holding even more.

My observations As soon as this occurred to me, I started examining clients with this in mind. My first client was myself. I found that I am currently holding 30x more trauma in my fascia than in the other tissues and organs of my body combined. I quickly scanned through a number of other clients and found that I am abnormal... because the next lowest person had SIXTY TIMES more trauma stored in their fascia than in the rest of their tissues combined, and one person had A THOUSAND TIMES more trauma stored in their fascia than their muscles.

DUH! All of a sudden it felt like I had unlocked a door to even more healing potential in myself and others. Several clients with body issues relatively unresponsive to other emotional intervention, I had been focusing on muscle and bones. As soon as I started working with that client's fascia... well, we found a whole new set of things to clear and work with. There is hope once again!

My littlest guy with his robot and
my FasciaBlaster!

More cool stuff about fascia So I've been reading Ashley Black's book The Cellulite Myth--go check it out, guys--and it points out that "the very first cells of life are actually fascia cells. What is medically called a zygote is a cluster of living fascia cells, and we are created that way for a reason." YES! What a huge testament to the
emotional significance of fascia. We are literally formed of it from the beginning. Of COURSE it would hold an enormous amount of our emotions--emotions from conception forward and possibly even backward from there.

Black brings up Psalm 139:9, which states "You knit me together in my mother's womb." And she points out: FASCIA is what knit us together in our mother's womb. What.

If you're looking to heal yourself from the beginning to now, fascia seems like an obvious place to start the process!

All emotions are chemical, as established above--our bodies manufacture the chemicals of emotion that we experience. When we have an excess of an emotion, the physical molecules of excess emotion get lodged in our bodies, where they can cause problems. A good book that explores that more is The Emotion Code by Bradley Nelson.

In my work, I find emotional residue in all tissues: bones, muscles, glands, organs, even skin--and I had never thought to check FASCIA regularly until recently. (It's come up before from time to time, but it hasn't been something I regularly check.) But sure enough, as I mentioned before, there are emotions hiding out there too!

And when do they come out? Well, you can get them out through energy and intuitive work like I do, but the other way to get the emotions out is to physically trigger them.

You need to "trigger" your fascia.

Just like in a massage, when your muscles are massaged and memories and emotions come up, when the fascia is moved around and addressed, the memories and emotions it stores also come up. This is how to clear your emotions manually.

Enter the FasciaBlaster. So guys, I need to apologize in advance because this might come off as sales-y, but I really don't mean it to be. I totally don't know Ashley Black, and I do not get compensated in any way for talking about the FasciaBlaster. But I have to tell you guys about the product because, well, you'll see. READ ON! So maybe two months ago I started getting a bunch of Facebook ads for a thing called the FasciaBlaster. Here's the FasciaBlaster website. At first I blew the ads off, because--oh, you know. It's a Facebook ad. But one day, I allowed myself to actually watch one of the videos, and my interest was piqued.

So, you have to understand that I SERIOUSLY HATE HATE HATE watching videos. I really don't enjoy it. If there's an option to read a thing or watch a thing, I will ALWAYS choose to read. Youtube... I'm like allergic to it, guys. Not really. But it is NOT a place I ever frequent.

My FasciaBlaster! A top view.

So it should say a lot that the next thing that happened was I went to Youtube and started watching videos about the FasciaBlaster. Video after video... it was blowing my mind. I didn't watch any from Ashley Black, just from random people who tried it. I was stunned at their results.

But a real FasciaBlaster is so expensive! I thought. I went to Amazon and ordered a $10 knockoff loser version that was totally not worth the money, guys. Save your money and buy the real deal because it is completely worth the money and completely different from anything else on the market.

SO then there were a few fruitless weeks with a loser knockoff fascia thing, and then I told myself: I need the real deal, and I just went ahead and ordered the real thing.

THE RESULTS! I don't have pictures because I am lame and don't take pictures of myself. But I was STUNNED when I got the thing. Blasting was easy, and it was so effective. I saw a difference after just a few times. Really, after the first time. I got it on a Friday and had lost two inches off my waist by Monday of that same weekend (I think I got all the stuff that was easy to clear that first time!). My butt has actually changed shape (is that TMI? sorry!!). My "I had three kids" baby sag-pooch thing on my lower abdomen is shrinking and the skin is firming up very noticeably. Again, sorry no pictures. Maybe I'll take some and do an update post in a few months.

BUT the really important results are not having a smooth tummy or cuter butt. The REALLY important results are that just using Ashley Black's FasciaBlaster has been helping my fascia heal both physically AND emotionally.

Since I started FasciaBlasting, I've had a number of breakthroughs that have been incredibly significant for me. They happened along with energy work and intuitive work, but I feel very strongly that these shifts were only possible because I started taking care of my physical fascia and dislodging the emotional gunk that was holding me back. Clearing my fascia has led to both physical AND emotional improvements in my life.

GETTING VULNERABLE: PERSONAL SUCCESS STORIES I just wanted to talk about a few of the emotional breakthroughs I've noticed in myself since combining FasciaBlasting and energy work.

The first one: a few years ago I had a falling out with my best friend. It was devastating. Literally since that day, it has weighed on me. Every. Single. Day. I have prayed about how to make it better. It has been an enormous emotional drain on me. I went to my bishop about it and he agreed that I didn't really owe an apology for anything but how else do you make something better, besides apologize? Even if you didn't do anything wrong? I had no idea. It's just been this big drain on my system for two years now.

AND over the weekend, it cleared. All of a sudden, I feel peace about the situation. I love my friend, I wish her the best, I hope we can heal and be friends again someday, and I also know that I don't need to carry the weight of all that anymore. It's gone. I do feel that an amount of that trauma was stored in the fascia in my tummy sag. A large amount of our conflict had to do with our children, so it makes sense that the trauma would be stored in the fascia over the womb.

Another thing: more motherhood trauma. The backstory is: I literally ate with silverware by the age of 9 months. At 9 months old, I was very literally walking, and talking, and eating with silverware, people thought I was a freaky doll, and from that very age I have been excruciatingly neat with my food. (My older brother was severely disabled so I benefited from an enormous amount of therapy and intervention as an infant. What early intervention can do for a neurotypical!)

Food messes... they have always been such a huge trigger for me. It was bad enough with my siblings growing up, but as a mother... well, you other mothers know that once you have kids, it's like everything is a food mess. For a naturally immaculate eater, this has been extremely traumatic for me. It sounds ridiculous, but just the normal day-to-day food messes of children has been really difficult for me to handle. I found myself feeling anger. Frustration. Disgust. Oh, more than anything, disgust. It has made motherhood really hard. Even despite all the energy work I have done to clear my issues with this.

This is another trauma I feel was stored in the fascia over my womb. As I've cleared that fascia, all of a sudden, it's like my energy work on this issue has been many times more effective. Honestly, I feel like clearing these fascia problems has enabled this issue to clear completely. I have been actually stunned. This is Day 11 of me being completely chill with my children. No yelling and no stomping from this mama. Not even when they spill enormous cups of juice all over the floor, not when my girl knocked a hole in the wall earlier this week, not when they tore up a giant thing of styrofoam and turned on the ceiling fan to make "snow" all over the basement yesterday (side story: I literally had to vacuum my WALLS over this and I only have a normal vacuum with no attachments... and I wasn't even bitter about it! MIRACLE!). It's like all my chronic frustration and anger and disgust with that kind of stuff is just gone. It feels amazing to be the mom I've wanted to be this whole time: calm, cool, collected, even when my kids are, you know, making choices that I feel are less than ideal or that make more work for me.

3yo happy at the kitchen table!

Last night, my 3yo threw a giant fit at dinner because she wanted jellybeans for dinner. Normally I would have told her to get her butt in her seat and eat her dinner because you get what you get and you don't get upset. That's still the rule (you get what you get!), but last night I handled it differently, without even planning to. Last night, it was so weird: I found myself kneeling down to get on her level, and I just said: "Honey, you're tired, you're thirsty, you're hungry, and you need a hug." And I just hugged her until she sank into my arms, and then she said, "I'll eat my dinner, Mama," simple as that. It was so much nicer than my old way of being.

A CLIENT'S EXPERIENCE I recommended the FasciaBlaster to one of my clients, and she's been using it for maybe a few weeks. Just this past week, she finally broke through some stubborn thought patterns and I personally credit the FasciaBlaster for putting her over the edge with that one. You know I'm a big believer in energy work, but the reality is that our bodies need the proper support too: both nutritionally with the right food and physically with things like the FasciaBlaster to break up knotted up physical and emotional gunk!

CONCLUSION Here is my conclusion:

- Got an emotional or physical problem that hasn't been clearing despite regular emotion work or meditation? Get a ::REAL:: on-brand Ashley Black FasciaBlaster from her website. And try it out. It is amazing! I do not get paid from this at all--I just really believe in it!! I have tried the knockoffs and they super suck! Do not fall for them thinking you will save time or money because you will not! Just put that money towards the real deal. This is like energetic detoxes. Energetic detoxes can go a long way, but many times they can't 100% replace physical detoxes. An energetic liver detox can be helpful, but it can't replace the real deal (link to my article on how to clear spiritual gunk from the liver via a physical detox cleanse--not selling anything). Similarly, clearing emotions from the fascia can do so much, but actually healing up the fascia through physical intervention adds a whole new (and I suspect, irreplaceable) level to the healing.

- Already blast and feel emotional when you do it? This is probably why--you're breaking up knots of emotions when you break up troublesome fascia.